Archive for ‘January, 2017’

On the eve of the Gulf War, Nina, a French woman living in Israel with her husband and son, struggles to establish herself as a musician while raising a child. Her husband is injured while away on reserve duty, and mysteriously returns in a catatonic state. As the secret of her husband's experience is gradually revealed, Nina begins to confront the toll that the political situation in Israel takes on her domestic life. The film explores the plight of an Israeli soldier wounded by his transgression of his own ethical code as well as the difficulties that his loved ones experience in caring for him. Features French actress Fanny Ardant as Nina. Director Michal Bat-Adam, once known solely for her fine acting, is now recognized as one of Israel's leading film directors.

A wandering knight Lancelot, a distant descendant on the maternal side of the famous Sir Lancelot, enters a city which is ruled by a fierce dragon for already four years. Most of the residents of the city do not want to be rescued from the tyranny of the monstrous serpent, explaining its historical importance...

A brilliant movie, like most of Russian's movies. Based on the play "Kill the Dragon", by Evgeni Schwartz, it is mostly like theater, with strong accent on the characters, the plot, the acting.

The movie delves deep into the psychology of the tyranny and oppression, and into the psychology of the oppressed. "I started to envy the slaves.", says Lancelot, "They know everything in advance. They have solid convictions; maybe, because they have no choice?"

The film is a fantasy version of the real-life adventures of Kay Francis, Carole Landis, Martha Raye, and Mitzi Mayfair, who served together as the first all-female volunteer troupe for the USO. Here, the four stars play themselves, more or less, as they travel from the States to England to the frontlines of Africa, meeting up with famous guest stars, falling in love with soldiers (just as depicted here, Landis really did marry an officer she met on the tour), and even helping out as nurses when necessary.

Fans of WWII-era showbiz will get a kick out of seeing filmed reenactments of "Command Performance" radio programs, which were produced to entertain the troops with their string of guest stars, musical numbers, and comedy skits.

Andreas meets Mika in Italy and they quickly fall in love and get married. However, upon their return to Greece, Andreas meets Mika's eccentric family and sees that living with them will not be such an easy thing. Mika's spoiled character also surfaces for the first time...

When economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner teamed up to write the 2005 book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, the results were astonishing -- a New York Times bestseller, the book sold over four million copies and became a genuine intellectual phenomenon. But the book--an exploration of economic theory in unexpected spheres -- wouldn't seem a likely candidate for film adaptation. The makers of Freakonomics hit on an ingenious approach: get six filmmakers to create an omnibus documentary, each segment tackling a different section of the book. The results are, for the most part, exhilaratingly smart and engaging, a sly and entertaining look at some very heavy stuff.

Brothers Bud (Michel Ray) and Ken (Johnny Crawford) arrive in a small coastal town where their dad, Dave Brewster (Adam Williams) joins a team of scientists preparing to launch a new, top secret satellite weapon known as "The Thunderer". While project leader Lieutenant Colonel Manley (Richard Shannon) and chief scientist Dr. Wahrman (Raymond Bailey) are anxiously counting down to launch day, Bud and Ken and the children of other scientists working on the project, including cheerful Edie (Sandy Descher), troubled Tim (Johnny Washbrook) and tykes Buster, George and Helen, stumble across a cave containing a glowing alien brain. The space creature forges a psychic link with its new young friends, enlisting them to sabotage the rocket project that their dads are working on! Will the combined forces of Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) and The Professor from “Giligan’s Island” (Russell Johnson) be enough to stop, “The Space Children”?

Biography of Mohammed Ali Jinnah is told through flashbacks as his soul tries to find eternal rest. It takes place in the after-life, in modern times, as he tells his life story in a computer data library to a celestial scholar guide (Shashi Kapoor). Jinnah looks back at his youth, starting in 1916 Darjeeling; his political ambitions; his marriage to the Parsee beauty Ruttie (Indira Varma), who converted to Muslim; the lifetime help he received from his unmarried sister Fatima (Shireen Shah); his formative relationships with the movers of the day; the bloodshed over Pakistan's fight for independence; and how it was through his stubborn insistence on independence at all costs that the country was born in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims.

In 1943, the year in which the first A-bomb was built, Albert Hofmann discovered LSD, a substance that was to become an A-bomb of the mind. Fractions of a milligram are enough to turn our framework of time and space upside down. The story of a drug - its discovery in the Basel chemistry lab, the first experiments by Albert Hofmann on himself, the 1950s experiments of the psychiatrists, the consciousness researchers, the artists.

Martin Witz's fascinating film traces the history of the drug, from its early tests, possible military applications and to its eventual fame as drug-of-choice for the hippie generation, and it is a wonderfully mounted montage of archive footage and interviews that makes for compulsive viewing.

The ebullient comedy films of the 1930s brought escape and laughter to millions of British cinemagoers, enabling veteran stars of the music-hall and theatre to reach out to a wider audience making household names of performers like Leslie Fuller, Hal Gordon, Bobby Howes, Ernest Lotinga and Gene Gerrard.

Although comedy would prove to be the decade's most successful film genre, many of these classic early talkies have remained unseen since their original release.

LET ME EXPLAIN, DEAR (1932)
A husband flirts with a pretty girl after a taxi smash, but a delicate situation ensues when he has to explain the presence of her necklace in his pocket!

THE OUTCAST (1934)
A music-hall star and his best mate are conned out of their earnings (twice!) and left with nothing but a beloved greyhound.

The Fantasticks is one of the most successful musicals ever made in theater history with a stunning run of 17,162 performances. The musical broke records and made an important historical mark in theater.

Matt Hucklebee (Joey McIntyre) and Luisa Bellamy (Jean Louisa Kelly) are neighbors and deeply in love, despite the fact that their fathers Ben Hucklebee (Brad Sullivan) and Amos Bellamy (Joel Grey, speaking of Cabaret) are avowed enemies. Except — they're not (enemies, that is). The two fathers, experts at divining the roiling psychologies of their progeny, have created a fake feud in order to spark a romance between their children. It's worked, perhaps unexpectedly so, but now the fathers are on the hunt for a convenient (and convincing) way to bring the whole charade to a close, so that everyone can sing and dance their way to a happily ever after. However, their plans fail and things begin to be complicated between Louise and Matt...

The film was met with poor test audience responses and indifference. The film was ultimately shelved for five years and then it received only a small theatrical run in 2000. Today, The Fantasticks (1995) has finally received a release containing both the original cut and the theatrical version.